


Religion is Not a Cure

by bunnybrook



Category: Fight Club (1999), Fight Club - All Media Types, Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Genre: M/M, Pre-Movie(s), Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-23 22:45:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4895152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnybrook/pseuds/bunnybrook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack can't sleep</p>
            </blockquote>





	Religion is Not a Cure

I stand in the halls of a Catholic church, something with holy water by the door to cast out the evils of the world. I’m thinking, I might get to sleep in a pew. The doors are always open, the priest had told me when I came to the service that morning, desperate for something. I was thinking, I might sleep while the man in white drones on and on about God.

My footsteps echo forever as I find a place to let my ass go numb on.

I sit in the front, where I’d feel the priest’s spit if he were talking. There’s someone else in here, in the back, some sitcom husband, complete with beer belly and unfulfilling marriage. He has the tan lines of a ring but it’s in his pocket or at home or on the dresser of the last girl he snuck off into the night with.

I lean forward with my elbows on my knees and pray.

Deliver me, God, from insomnia. Is there something I can take that will help me sleep?

Please, God, give me pills.

Please, God, turn the TV off so it doesn’t startle me right as I’m drifting off, as if that’s what is really happening.

I have a rosary made of baby teeth in my hand, the cross carved out of a shin bone. It’s wrapped around my wrists until my fingers turn blue. The ambulance comes but it’s too late to save them and I have to have them cut off on the spot.

I look up and make eye contact with the bloody Jesus on the cross.

Please, God, deliver me from my body. Deliver me from the sinful material needs that fester like foot fungus. Deliver me from my shit job that takes a year of my life every day that I go. Deliver me from my shit boss who feeds off the life that is taken from me.

There has to be a saint just for me. Saint John or James or Jack who holds himself below others, but above most everyone else. He has an apartment full of furniture that has taken all of his money and all of his life to buy, his soul being torn out of him and fused into the newest mahogany desk, complete with a neat little hidden drawer in the back. He has to lay on his back every night, thinking about that time he almost fed his friend’s hamster rat poison because she told him that the hamster was pregnant and he thought that meant he’d have to take care of them. He has to wonder if this is real, if he could just fall asleep at any minute or if he was faking all of it.

Who am I doing this for? he has to ask himself. Who am I trying to impress?

I can feel God in the walls of the church. He’s blond and fit and stares at me with blue eyes. I feel naked in front of him and His dick is bigger than mine. He laughs at me and I hear Him and I start to understand the phrase ‘God-fearing Christian.’

“Wrong church,” God says, and he puts His cigarette out between Mother Mary’s eyes. He walks down the aisle, in between the pews and right past the sitcom husband, out into the night. I sit there for a while and wonder what constitutes a religious experience and what constitutes a daylight hallucination.

God is long gone by the time I’m out of the church. The stars shine on, His creation and His light. The moon isn’t bright enough to guide my way home.


End file.
